These files contain handwritten and typescript drafts, often pinned or stuck together, for a range of lectures given by Joseph Needham. They include:
- ‘The Coming of Ardent Water’ by Joseph Needham and Lu Gwei-Djen
- ‘Alcohol paper’ for Ambix
- ‘Alchimie et Chimiotherapie dans l’Histoire de la Chine’
- ‘L’éxlir dans la Chine, l’Islam et l’Occident Latin’
- ‘Alchimie physiologique (nei tan) et Iatro-chimie’
- ‘Physiological alchemy (nei tan) and Iato-chemistry’
- ‘Pratique et Théorie dans la Chine Ancienne (wai tan)’
- ‘Practice and Theory in Early Chinese Chemistry (wai tan)’
- ‘Aurifaction and Aurifiction in Chinese Alchemy’
- ‘The Elixir Concept and Chemical Medicine in East and West’
- ‘China and the Arabic World’
- ‘The Name and Concept of Elixir’
- ‘The Drug of Deathlessness; Macrobiotics and Immortality Theory in East and West’ (this may be a sub-section of another lecture)
- ‘Lecture on the Beginnings of Pedology (Soil Science)’ Europe-China Association international summer school, Oxford, 2 Aug.1980
- ‘New Light on Chinese Alchemy’ Cambridge Philosophical Society, 2 Feb.1981 (includes Joseph Needham’s annotated proofs and offprint of ‘Alchemy and Early Chemistry in China’ published in ‘The Frontiers of Human Knowledge, Uppsala, 1978)
- ‘Muskets and Variolation’ NIRA (National Institute for Research Advancement, Japan) ‘main lecture’ Tokyo 28 Sep. 1981
- ‘Some thoughts about China’ photocopied report of an address delivered by Joseph Needham at a lunch held in honour of Joseph and Dorothy Needham on 16 Jul. 1946
- Notes for a lecture in Shanghai on 23 Sep. 1981 and in the Academia Sinica conference room I the Min Tsu building 15 Sep. 1981
- Time keeping notes for a lecture at Harvard, 3 Oct. 1983
- Notes for a lecture at a ‘MICE’ meeting 30 Oct. 1986
- Annotated typescript for a lecture or article on gunpowder
- Typescript questions for an interview at the Audio-Visual Department, 28 Jan. 1986
- ‘Trans-Pacific Echoes and Resonances’ lecture given in Taipei Sep. 1984
- ‘Prolusione for the Course on East-West Relations’ lecture as part of a series organised by the Cini Foundation and given in Venice Aug. 1983
- ‘China and the Origins of Immunology’.